As the U.S. Economy and population grew, Native Americans tribes were increasingly pushed west. Tribes were treated as nations, with land concessions to be negotiated by formal treaties. These treaties, drafted of course by the U.S., gave all advantages to the United States and signed by tribes who poorly understood them. Tribes did not regard land as property to be parceled and sold, and thus many times they did not realize they were permanently giving up their right to land. Failure of the tribes to govern its disparate people, coupled with violation of new boundaries by indignant settlers, caused hostilities on both sides.

By 1830, the first definitive policy for Native Americans was in place, in which tribes were forcibly moved to places west of the Mississippi River, causing resentment on the part of eastern tribes as well as western tribes. Eventually the railroad...